The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  Suddenly he sneezed, hard. Then he coughed with a dry and raspy sound.

  “Are you okay?” Caroline asked.

  He shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “All right, good. Don’t go getting sick on me, now.”

  “I won’t.”

  He followed her with his eyes as she left the room with his prize.

  The floating came to an abrupt end; Janie felt the sweet solidity of the riverbed shelf when Jellybean’s foot made contact, just a few feet upstream of the point of no return. With each step they came higher out of the water, and soon they were completely on the shore. She turned Jellybean around and looked back at the opposite shore; one man was dragging his wounded cohort along the riverbank, toward the bridge encampments.

  Water poured off the horse and out of Janie’s soaked garments in a cold, hard flood. With her rider still on her back, Jellybean shook herself from head to toe. Janie clenched her teeth together through the long vibration so she wouldn’t bite her tongue. Then Jellybean took off again, as if she sensed the urgency of their journey. Janie brought her to a halt with a tug on the reins, then climbed down.

  She removed her wet clothing, every soaking piece of which fought her by clinging desperately to her skin. She could barely feel her hands as she wrung the water out of her pants and coat. Each squeeze was torture as hot blood tried to rush back into her frozen fingers. She turned her boots upside down and poured out what water remained, then banged them against a tree trunk to shake off what more she could, each whack sending a jolt through her spine. Only those items she’d placed at the very top of her backpack remained dry; her extra pants were soaked, as was the wool sweater she’d brought. She had dry socks, underwear, a shirt, and a blanket, one end of which was slightly damp. She wrapped everything else in the jacket and tied it into a dripping bundle. Then Prairie Woman Janie Crowe got back onto Jellybean in her underwear, socks, and shirt, and wrapped the blanket around her.

  Twelve shivering miles, she thought, all uphill. She looked for the sun and found it directly overhead, to her south. It was just past noon.

  Michael shook the metal box and listened for loose parts. He heard no rattling.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he said to his wife. “But I’m inclined to open it up to see what’s inside. It might be some kind of tracking device. If it is, there’ll be a chip of some sort.”

  He held it out at arm’s length so his aging eyes could make out the inscription that was etched on one side of the metal frame. “908,” he said. “I wonder what that means.”

  “Maybe it’s part of a series. A tracking number for a repopulation program or something. Whatever it is, they’re probably not tracking it anymore. Just make sure you can get it back together again, or you’ll have to be the one who explains to Alex.”

  “Yes, dear,” he said. It would be the least of his worries. He set the object down on the table and went to get his tool chest. Alex watched from the doorway as Michael went after the cover on the metal box with screwdrivers and pliers as he himself had done before.

  “Bloody thing is built like a Sherman tank,” Michael said as he struggled to get it open. Finally, the top sprang off and landed about a foot away. From his place in the doorway, Alex gasped. He ran forward and picked it up, then brought it back to Michael.

  “No harm done, I don’t think,” Michael said after a quick examination. He set down his tools and peered into the workings of the mystery box.

  “Get me my spyglass, will you, love?”

  Caroline went off dutifully and came back with the magnifier. “Here you are, Sherlock.”

  “Thanks.” He put the glass over the open box and looked closer. “There’s a chip, all right. And some kind of tiny transmitter.” He set the glass down on the table and looked at his wife. “Right about now, if there’s anyone paying attention—which is doubtful—someone out there thinks we’re an eagle.”

  “Boss, there’s something funny happening.”

  Bruce left Lany alone and stepped out into the hallway.

  “908’s back online again.”

  The bird had been off-line for a while after their determination that she was walking.

  “She’s going on and off,” Fredo said. He pushed a pin into the map at the location indicated by the coordinates.

  Bruce looked at the topography. “She’s on the mountain,” he said. “Has she ever done this before?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Just then the transmission stopped completely. For several minutes there was no signal at all. Then, just as abruptly, it began again.

  “I don’t get this. They only stop when you open them. Even if the bird is dead, the thing will keep going until the battery wears down. And that hasn’t happened yet.”

  Bruce hurried back to Lany’s holding room.

  “You said you killed an eagle, that it had a box on its leg.”

  “Right.”

  “Did you take the box with you?”

  “No. We left her there.”

  “With the box on her leg still.”

  She nodded her head in confirmation.

  A few seconds later she said, “Wait a minute. I sent Alex back to get the hatchet. I left it on the ground near the pole.”

  “Alex? The little boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could he have taken the box?”

  “Not without—” She stopped, remembering that he had blood on his hands and wondering at the time if he’d touched Tom without her seeing it happen.

  Bruce finished the sentence for her. “Not without cutting off the leg.”

  “Here you go, sport, good as new.” Michael put the box in Alex’s hand and patted him on the head. “Put it someplace safe, why don’t you.”

  He took the little cube of metal and walked into his parents’ bedroom. His father was sleeping—again, he thought. He put his metal treasure into the wood box on their bureau.

  Janie couldn’t tell where the sun was in the sky any longer; the trees on either side of the mountain road obstructed her view. She clung precariously to Jellybean’s back, only looking up now and then to see that the mare was still on the correct course. She hadn’t been this way in several years; even in her near delirium, the deterioration of the road surface astonished her. Chunks of blacktop were all she saw as they moved up the mountainside, because it was too much of an effort to lift her head.

  She wrapped her frozen fingers in Jellybean’s silky mane; that was the only way she could hold on. The reins were trailing down the horse’s neck, swaying rhythmically as they climbed upward. Janie could feel each plodding step; she began to wonder if the horse would have the steam to make it all the way. She had no idea what she would do if Jellybean gave up.

  But the mare pulled through. Thirteen hours after their sunrise start, they reached the compound. The gate was locked, as Janie expected it would be. Still astride the horse, she reached out and took hold of the bell chain and pulled, over and over again. The gate opened and she saw Michael, who reached out and took the reins. He pulled Jellybean inside and closed the gate just as Janie slid off and fell to the ground.

  “He had to have touched the blood, then,” Bruce said with alarm. “He had to have cut the leg off to get the box, and there had to be blood.”

  “The bird was already dead,” Lany said. “I cut her head off. Her heart wouldn’t still be pumping.”

  “How long before?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “At that point, blood would probably still be settling in her extremities. If he had to pull to get the box off, whatever was in the leg would ooze out.” He breathed in deeply. “If that bird was infected, he could be too.”

  “Do you happen to know what the infection rate is in your birds?”

  “No. We haven’t tested them. None of them has gotten sick, so there didn’t seem to be any point. But they can be carriers, we know this for sure.”

  Lany stood up and starte
d to pace. “We have to get to them somehow and let them know. Another e-mail—a carrier pigeon! Something. We just have to tell them!”

  Bruce put his hand on her shoulder. “Please,” he said. “Don’t panic. This takes a very long time to develop—weeks, maybe, from what we’ve seen. It’s slow-moving and slow-growing; the difficulty is that by the time there are symptoms, the disease has a good hold.”

  “It was almost a month ago when this happened.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “You didn’t ask. Oh, God,” she moaned again, “does it respond to anything, any antibiotics?”

  He hesitated, though he wasn’t sure exactly why. “We just started working on something we hope will work, but it hasn’t really been put to a test yet. We have a few leftover antibiotics available to us, some streptomycin, aureomycin, a few more of the common pre-SAM drugs, but none of them has been terribly effective. It seems to mutate as fast as we attack it.”

  Lany flopped down in a chair and closed her eyes. She let her head hang over the back of the chair. “This is a very—special little boy. We can’t let him get sick.”

  Bruce wondered what was so much more special about him than any other child but did not ask.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” Lany moaned.

  In the silence that ensued, the chirping of her PDA in Bruce’s pocket sounded like the Liberty Bell.

  J home solo. ?????????????????????????

  “She got back,” Lany cried gleefully. “Home, they said. She must have gone to the mountain. Oh, thank God. She’ll be there to take care of Alex if he gets sick. God knows what she’ll be able to do for him, but she’ll do it better than anyone else can.”

  Bruce didn’t say anything immediately. After a few moments, he said, “You can send back if you want to. Just write, Safe—nothing more. It’ll have to do.”

  “Okay,” Lany said. “Thank you.” She immediately touched in the allowed letters and pressed Reply. When she saw that the message had been sent, she closed the cover on the PDA and started to put it in her own pocket.

  “No, sorry,” Bruce said. He held out his hand, palm open. “I think I’d better keep it for a little longer.”

  She handed it to him, reluctantly, and felt its void when it was out of her control. He replaced it in his pocket, then picked up a chair and positioned it directly opposite her. He sat down and faced her full-on, as if he meant business.

  “This woman Janie,” he said. “What was her last name?”

  Lany was struck by the immediate thought that his interest was too strong to be entirely casual. “You know,” she lied, “I don’t know. We never use our last names—there doesn’t seem to be any point.”

  “Ever heard her mention her maiden name?”

  “No.”

  “And her son, what was his name again?”

  She hesitated, and then said, “Alex.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Seven.”

  “So he was born after the second round.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said she could take care of him,” he said. “What was her profession?”

  Lany clammed up. “I don’t know these people all that well, so I’m not really sure….”

  “That’s all right,” he said quietly. “It’s not important.”

  Caroline put two large, smooth rocks on the stove to warm them and then carried them in a pan to Janie and Tom’s bedroom. She lifted the covers and saw that Janie was still shivering mightily, though she was swaddled in the bedclothes. She slipped the pan next to Janie’s legs and replaced the covers.

  “Hot rocks, just like in the good old days,” she whispered to her friend. “You’ll be warm soon.”

  Tom sat in the chair next to the bed, but Janie did not come out of her delirium for several long hours, during which Alex remained there as well. As his father watched, the boy checked his mother’s pulse, took her temperature, listened to her breathing, and recorded everything diligently on his chalkboard. When he fell asleep snuggled against his father, Caroline and Kristina took turns watching over her vital signs. When she wet herself in the middle of the night, it was Caroline who cleaned her, changed her nightdress, and refreshed the bedclothes. When Janie opened her eyes in the middle of it all and whispered her thanks, Caroline smiled and whispered, “Payback, bud. Payback. Remember London, what you and Bruce did for me?”

  An hour before dawn, her trembling finally stopped. She opened her eyes to see her husband and son entwined in sleep on the cot. She raised herself up on one elbow to get a better look at them.

  Tom looked older than when she’d last seen him, less than two weeks ago. She wondered how that could be. But there was more peace in his expression than when she’d left for Orange. She saw only one crutch resting against the wall near the cot; it was progress, and she hoped it meant that he was coming out of his depression.

  Thank God.

  She wanted desperately to hold him. But rest was what they both needed. “Alex,” she said quietly. She reached out and touched his arm, and he came awake.

  “Don’t wake your father.”

  He got out of the cot with small careful movements and slipped under the covers with his mother. He wrapped his small arms around her, his flannel sticking like Velcro to hers.

  Bruce left Lany in the watchful care of Fredo and one other man and went to his own quarters. When he looked in the mirror after splashing water on his face, he thought to himself, She wouldn’t recognize me. He removed his pants, and they fell to the floor with a clunk. He picked up the forgotten PDA and flipped open the cover.

  Why not? he thought.

  Following the prompts, he typed in a brief message:

  Pass to J from B: Leeds

  He pressed Send and let the message fly, for better or worse.

  Steve Roy stared at the computer screen. “B. Leeds? Who the hell is that? And pass what? There’s no message.”

  “I don’t know,” Linda said. “Whoever B. Leeds is, he’s got fat fingers. He hit the colon instead of the period. Just pass it along as it is—it must mean something, or Lany wouldn’t have sent it.”

  “Maybe she didn’t send it.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. Finally, Steve said, “I’m going to pass it along. Maybe it means something to the two of them that we don’t know about. She sent back that she’s safe, and that’s a relief, but we still don’t know what happened out there, and if they have some kind of a new code going between the two of them, I don’t want to mess anything up.” He typed in a few commands and passed the message on to the compound. “But I’ll tell you what, I think it’s time we paid a call to the other side of the mountain.” He patted Linda’s shoulder. “Let ’em know, will you?”

  Kristina was the first to respond to the chime.

  “It’s a message for Janie,” she said.

  She got up from the computer and went to the bedroom, where everyone was asleep.

  She came to the bedside and sat down in the empty chair. Janie opened her eyes.

  “How are you?” Kristina said softly.

  “I feel like I climbed Mount Everest,” Janie answered in a weak voice. “I am so tired I can’t even think.” Then she struggled to one elbow. “But Lany’s still out there…. I’ve got to let them know that she’s been taken….”

  “We already sent them a message that you came back alone. They sent one back that she’s ‘safe,’ but we don’t know anything more than that.”

  Janie lay back again. “Safe…” she said. “Thank God.”

  “But there’s a new one that came in, which they want us to pass to you. It’s odd; no one can figure it out. We think maybe part of it didn’t come through.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Pass to J from B: Leeds. No one can figure out who B. Leeds is. It came in on the PDA, so Lany has to be there with whoever sent it.”

  Leeds. Something clicked in Janie’s still-woozy brain, but she couldn’t
make it out. She sat up slowly and got out of bed, taking care not to wake Alex. “I better take a look at it.”

  She padded through the lodge in her pajamas, still a bit unsteady, and went to the computer. Kristina stayed close to her. She sat down at the desk and looked at the message, which was still on the screen.

  “He doesn’t type very well,” Kristina said. “He hit the colon instead of the period.”

  “Wait a minute, there’s no colon on the PDA keyboard.”

  “Maybe it was sent from a computer.”

  Suddenly, Janie’s brain came back. “Even on a computer it doesn’t make sense,” she said. She looked hard at the keyboard. “You have to hit the shift key to get the colon, otherwise it’s the semicolon. You don’t hit the shift for the period.”

  Kristina leaned closer and looked at the message again. “It’s definitely a colon.”

  “Then it had to be intentional.”

  Pass to J from B: Leeds. Janie stared at it.

  Leeds. B. Leeds. B and Leeds.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  Bruce, and Leeds. They’d had their first date in Leeds while she was in England, in a restaurant that was housed in a building that had once been a toy factory.

  But it couldn’t be.

  “It can’t be.”

  “What can’t be?” Kristina said.

  “I—I’m not sure yet, give me a minute.”

  She hit the Reply button and typed in the word toy. She hit the Send button, then folded her arms across her chest as if she had to protect herself from something. She sat at the computer for a little while, rocking back and forth, staring at the screen, waiting for a reply. When it seemed that none would come, she stood. “I’ve got to go back to bed. I’m still exhausted. If anything comes in, let me know.”

  Alex was still in the bed; he hadn’t moved from the position he’d been in when she left him. She lifted the bedclothes and felt an immediate rush of warmth. She looked for the warming pan; sometime in the night, Caroline had removed it.

  Janie put her hand on Alex’s forehead. It was hot and dry, and his cheeks were bright red.